"How not to be wrong" by Ellenberg. Use mathematical thinking to solve everyday problems.
Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
131–140 of 248 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#132“Out of the Crisis” by Demming: helped me see the best way to manage projects isn’t always about fixing problems, it starts with reducing uncertainty. “Seeing like a state”, “Knowledge and Power”, and “Antifragile”, top down control of a system always clashes with bottom up understanding, so experts in a field need humility when working with a new system and need to learn from the people who work with it every day. “…
> “Knowledge and Power”
Can you give the author?
Your other suggestions look interesting.
I've read Antifragile and loved it.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#133No post body was provided.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#134Masters of Doom. It’s the story of two renowned game developers, John Karmack and John Romero, and how they built id Software, the video game company that profoundly changed PC gaming and graphics. I was writing software for enterprise / consulting companies at the time (early phase of my career). This book opened my eyes to the crazy/wonderful/scary world of ‘startups’, the idea that people can bring their passion i…
Highly recommend masters of doom. I’ve read through it a couple of times and find it motivational.
I grew up playing Wolf3D and quake games, and in general have admiration for what they were able to build. So I am not sure if people without that context will feel the same way about the book though :)
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#135In USSR there was a very popular method of problem solving developed by Altshuller called TRIZ[1]. It seems that it is still being used in some other countries like Japan, S. Korea to improve manufacturing processes. I read the books but I don't think it helped me to become a better problem solver... I wonder if anyone looked at it too. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ
I read: https://www.amazon.com/40-Principles-TRIZ-Innovation-Extende...
and I still think it's a great way to find strategies to think outside the box.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#136Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Spent a few years trying to figure out how Help people without trying to force businesses to do what’s right. Anytime I hear a new fiscal policy or laws idea I can usually figure out if it’s going to work or cause problems https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465...
I'll add Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It provides an introduction to economics from an Austrian point of view, and dispells many common economic fallacies. A big takeaway for me is that the consequences of policies, such as providing loans to certain groups of farmers, have consequences that we cannot forsee.
https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Underst...
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#137From a software engineering standpoint: - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all the exercises is key). This book helped me think about how programs run, how state is stored, how you can build out asynchronous computation, and how you can build your own languages. - Designing Data Intensive Applications. This book profoundly changed how I think about application performance and data. It describe…
never thought i'd see someone mention HPMoR on HN :D
HPMoR seems to be a very popularly disliked fanfiction, judging by r/HPFanfiction
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#138Haven't seen this mentioned yet, so How to Solve It (1945) by George Pólya? I haven't read it myself so I can't comment (I'm a muddy thinker and rubbish problem solver), but I think it was mentioned in a good light in one of Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" pieces.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#139To me, the most influential book is Allisons’s Essence of Decision. Most people seem to treat it as a book about the Cuban middle crisis, which of course it is, but the event is analyses through the lens of several analytical techniques. That’s the part that is fascinating to me, especially the organizational process model.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#140John Rawls: A theory of justice. It's attempt to derive a theory of justice (obv.) using methods borrowed from analytic philosophy was hugely influential. Whether you agree with Rawls' conclusions or not it's a brilliant, meticulously argued book, albeit incredibly dense.
I am reading Rawls’ followup book, “Justice as Fairness”, which he describes as a kind of restatement or correction to Theory of Justice. I am not sure if it would have been better to read the original first. The idea of the Veil of Ignorance for deriving fundamental principles of justice is now one of the most fundamental ideas in my own moral philosophy.
Yes, the veil of ignorance (original position) is a very important idea. It doesn't come from Rawls though. Both Vickrey and Harsanyi wrote about it earlier (and perhaps better, since they didn't introduce implausible assumptions like infinite risk aversion).